


The Potter Twins and the Power of Friendship

by Silvermags



Series: WBWL Sans Salt and Bashing [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Also if you're looking for EWE, And boy is he mad, Bookends and Narrative Parallels, Brotherly Love, Brothers, But 5 out of 5 hate Snape. And Malfoy., Can't believe I didn't tag that yet, Cedric Diggory Lives, Christmas Quintet, Concerning Dracula Comparisons, Derailed Book 3's plot completely so guess who had to come up with something entirely new?, Floppy Nose Blubber Monster, Friendship, Gen, Harry Potter Has a Twin, I should note that 2 out of 5 of our protagonists are Slytherin, I would love that, If someone wanted to use this outline to make a full fledged fic, It's Not Paranoia If They're Really Out To Get You, Lily may or may not have dragged Snape in front of the entire great hall, Mass Oh Crap Moment, May I Reiterate FRIENDSHIP?, More People Than Canon Live, No Bashing, No One Likes Umbridge, No one's sure if that was on purpose or not., Outline Format, Paranoia Pals!, Redeemed Dudley Dursley, Running Low on Patience, Tags to be added as I come up with them, The power of friendship, Unless you're willing to apply EWE to chapter eight, Will and Harry think their mom is awesome, Will's hit list is growing by the day, Wrong Boy-Who-Lived (Harry Potter), at all, no salt, outline, this is not the fic for you, which is also a thing you can do
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:13:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 6,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24699634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silvermags/pseuds/Silvermags
Summary: We saw how the story of Harry Potter went as part of a power trio.  Now let's see how a five-man-band fares instead.  Outline Style.In magic, intent is what matters.
Relationships: Cedric Diggory & Neville Longbottom, Christmas Quintet Friendship, Harry Potter & Original Character(s), Hermione Granger & Harry Potter & Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger & Original Character(s), James Potter/Lily Evans Potter, Ron Weasley & Original Character(s)
Series: WBWL Sans Salt and Bashing [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1785664
Comments: 8
Kudos: 20





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was born of several things, but mostly me becoming very frustrated with some of my commenters where I cross-post on ff.net and a new idea subsequently eating my brain.
> 
> This is complete and will update every weekend until it's all out. Maybe now that it's been exorcised from my brain I can focus on my other projects again.
> 
> Anything that is not noted as having changed can be assumed to have played out mostly like canon, just with extra characters.

-As you may surmise from the title, Harry is born a twin. Harry James and Will Evan Potter, brothers. That’s the first point of divergence, not the last.

-Two more things changed the night Voldemort came for them. The first, James Potter got hit by a spell that was significantly less instantly fatal then the Killing Curse, but still not very fun. And the second, on the way up the stairs, Lily grabbed the invisibility cloak, which they’d kept for another few months because of a bad feeling she had. She was planning on wrapping the boys in it, to protect them.

-Voldemort came into the nursery while she was still holding the cloak. She begged for her sons' lives, offered herself in their place. She had every intention of dying if that meant her sons could live. And in magic, intent is what matters. The killing curse hit her when she leapt between her sons and Voldemort, but the cloak, the cloak that could hide you from even death, settled over her. And death didn’t come for her. But her sacrifice was accepted.

-Harry was left with a scar on his forehead, but Will was unmarked. When word got out, Will was quickly hailed as a savior, the boy who not only lived, but walked away without a scratch. James and Lily are less than amused.

-Just because Voldemort was dead didn’t mean all was well, however. The news of the Longbottom’s fate horrified the Potter parents, and they knew their family wasn’t safe.

-It was decided that they had to go back into hiding, but this time, even deeper. James and Lily would split up, James going one way, Lily another. Lily would take Will with her and claim to be a widow, James would pretend to be a bachelor. Harry, who was neither a combatant with potential information about Voldemort nor the vaunted boy savior, would be left with Lily’s sister, to grow up safe and secure and have a normal life. Famous last words.

-James ended up in New York, Lily and Will went to France. It was hard. They couldn’t access their money, in case it was tracked, and since they were using false names, they couldn’t use their real credentials either. Lily in particular had a very hard time being able to provide for the son she took with her, and Will, being a very bright little boy, noticed fairly young how hard his mother worked for so little in return. Certain seeds were planted then, when he was very young.

-After nearly ten years of that, James and Lily are tired. They miss their sons. They miss each other. They’re sick and tired of being basically banished from their home country. With truly awful timing, they decide that it’s been long enough. They’re coming home, just in time for their boys to start Hogwarts together.

-Lily is the one who goes to get Harry from Petunia’s house. The only reason Lily didn’t do something she would’ve ended up regretting is because Harry was watching.

-For the first time in nearly a decade, their whole family is together, and the twins celebrate their eleventh birthday together before heading off to Hogwarts. 

-On the subject of the twins, neither of them really has any idea what to  _ do _ with one another. What exactly are you supposed to do with your long lost twin brother, especially when you’ve both had different but extremely poor childhoods up to this point? 

-They end up splitting up as soon as they get on the train. Harry meets Ron, and the two of them hit it off. In the meantime, Will runs into Hermione while she’s helping Neville look for his toad, and the two of them get along famously.

-When the sorting rolls around, Harry is sorted into Gryffindor. Will is sorted into Slytherin.

-For a while the rather uncomfortable status quo is maintained, but then Ron and Harry run directly into Will as all three of them rush to save Hermione from the troll.

-In a chain of unlikely events, possibly involving Fluffy, Mrs. Norris, and an enormous hat, they pick up one last friend for a proper five man band. I can’t be bothered to look through the books to find a canon character that suits my needs, so let's invent one. Let’s say her name is Amy. She’s a Slytherin, she loves gothic horror and dragons, and she is absolutely vicious and merciless when riled. And there we go! When all five of them are together, they look kind of christmassy.

-While I’m thinking about it, Dumbledore. Evil Dumbledore’s are all well and good, but honestly? A bit overdone. So you can totally imagine him as an evil chessmaster if you like, but me? I’m going to say that he’s a very old, very tired man, who is trying to do what’s best for everyone. And if he falls short sometimes? Well, he is only human.

-In no particular order:

  * Harry and Will end up tag teaming the Remembrall thing. Harry gets on the quidditch team. Will gets detention. It is generally agreed that this is unfair. The two of them write their parents about it, complaining about Snape. James’s response was mostly incoherent rage. Lily had to take the pen away from him. She explained that James and Snape had been rivals at school, and since James and his friends had senses of humor comparable to the Weasley twins in a pique and Snape and his friends weren’t afraid to stoop to dark hexes, things very quickly got ugly. She had used to be friends with Snape but broke it off because he called her a particularly vulgar racist slur. So now Snape hates James for having the audacity to grow up to become a better person, Lily for having the audacity to have a mind and a life of her own, and the boys for having the audacity to look like them. The responses may or may not have been a howler. Lily may or may not have known it was a howler until after she sent it.



  * Amy is absolutely euphoric over Norbert(a). The others are kind of freaked out by their normally calm and acerbic friend squealing like a fangirl.



  * Ron teaches everyone to play chess. Will is the only one who is any good, but Hermione is determined.



-Will bonds with Hermione truly frightening work ethics, with Ron over chess, with Amy over being sneaky, and with Harry over rough childhoods and also flying. Amy bonds with Hermione over books, Ron over trying to get out the work ethic duo to chill, and Harry over transfiguration. (James promised to teach his sons the animagus transformation when they were old enough, and Harry is excited) All of them bond over hating Snape and Malfoy with a passion. Will and Amy complain, because at least the others can get away from him, they have to share a dorm!

-As mentioned, Will and Amy might be Slytherins, but the general consensus among our little christmas color quintet is still that Snape is definitely evil and probably the one after the sorcerer’s stone.

-It turns out that Amy is a very gifted singer. She sings Fluffy to sleep, then threatens to skin anyone who breathes a single word of it. The others are suitably intimidated.

-When they get through to the potion room, Hermione gives the one to go forward to Will, but Harry swipes it once he’s drunk half of it and plunges into the flames. Will uses every french dirty word he picked up living in the slums to call his brother an idiot, but follows him in. Quirrell can’t touch either of them.

-Will is the one who gets the stone out of the mirror, but Harry is the one who defeats Quirrell, tackling the possessed teacher off his brother, and holding on until he can’t anymore.

-Will camps out in the hospital wing nearly forty eight hours after Harry is brought in. Madam Pomfrey ends up showing him exactly what she’s doing to fix him up to get Will to relax and go get some sleep himself.

-I neither know nor do I care who won the house cup. Maybe Hufflepuff crept up from behind for a surprise win.

-The school year ends happily, and Will and Harry head home for their first full summer with the whole family.

**End Book One**


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, so, I got impatient. Updates on Wednesday and Saturday until complete!

-They try to keep the boys from hearing it, but James and Lily seriously discuss going back into hiding after the scare with Quirrell. Eventually they decide they can’t do that to the boys, but it was a very close thing indeed.

-Will and Harry are both enjoying the opportunity to have a real bedroom all of their own, so when Dobby tries to convince Will to not go back to Hogwarts, Harry is sound asleep down the hall. Unfortunately for Dobby, Will is living the dream here. The only way he’s not going back to Hogwarts is if he’s in a casket instead. Just because he’s a Slytherin doesn’t mean he’s not just as or more stubborn than his brother.

-No one is impressed by anything that happens on Diagon Alley. Well, that’s not true. Hermione is impressed by Lockhart. Amy thinks he’s cute, but sadly lacking in brains. The boys are flat out disgusted.

-Rather than Harry and Ron, Will and Amy are the ones who get stuck outside Diagon Alley. Don’t be fooled, their idea to try and leapfrog across the country via Floo causes no less problems than the flying car would have.

-The petrification of Mrs. Norris happens right on schedule, as does the dueling club. As it turns out, Will is the Boy Who Lived, but Harry is the parselmouth.

-After the dueling club, it is generally believed that one of the Potters must be the heir. Whether it’s Will or Harry or both depends on who you ask. Also depending on who you ask is whether the remaining twin is the tragic hero who will be forced to battle his evil brother, or the lieutenant in the eventual empire of terror. Will and Harry are incredibly irritated.

-You know what else still happens on schedule? The bludger thing. Dobby and Lockhart’s days are numbered. No one messes with Will’s family. He camps out in the hospital wing again and watches Madam Ponfrey work. This means that Harry is there for the next Dobby visit. Will hates Dobby’s guts by this point, but Harry is curious.

-They don’t strictly  _ need _ to make the polyjuice potion, but Amy and Will really want to see if they can pull it off. They can, but poor Hermione still ends up as a cat. Will is once again in the hospital wing, not quite as constantly as with his brother, though. Madam Pomfrey gets sick of having him underfoot and sets him to work.

-Harry is the one who finds the diary in the flooded bathroom, but Will is the one who grumbles his way out to the forbidden forest in search of spiders with Ron. Will also vows that he’s never going out into the forbidden forest ever again. Ron wholeheartedly agrees.

-Hermione is having a rough year and still ends up petrified, so all four remaining members of our christmas quintet make their way to the chamber in pursuit of Ginny together. Ron and Amy get cut off by the rockslide, and the twins end up going on without them.

-Harry pulls out the sword of Gryffindor and kills the basilisk. Will gets a fang and kills the diary. Then stabs it several more times for good measure while Harry goes to check on Ginny.

-It’s worth noting that at this point Ginny wakes up and sees Harry holding out his hand to her with a smile, sword still in his grip and basilisk dead behind him, and her hero-worship boy who lived crush transfers itself to Harry suddenly and in its entirety.

-Lucius Malfoy shows up and Harry frees Dobby. Will has no idea why he would do that, but he admits that the look on Draco Malfoy’s face when he finds out is absolute gold.

-The year ends out on a high note, with everyone de-petrified, healthy, happy, and heading home.

**End Book Two**


	3. Chapter 3

-Sirius Black never went to Azkaban. James stopped just long enough to clear his name after splitting up with Lily before heading into hiding and warning Sirius to do the same. This is the year that Sirius decides to come back, and this is the year that he cements his position as the fun uncle, who tells outrageous stories and gives extravagant gifts and encourages you to get in trouble. Will and Harry love him.

-You know who did end up in Azkaban? Peter Pettigrew. This is the summer that he makes a bid for freedom, but he doesn’t do it alone. Bellatrix Lestrange sees him going, and forces him to take her along. Cue Mass Oh Crap Moment.

-The dementors come to Hogwarts this year. So does Lupin. One of these things was a lot more popular than the other. Harry and Will have met Lupin a few times, but don’t know him very well, since in the past he mostly visited while they were away at school. The two of them quickly come to the conclusion that he’s awesome.

-Amy catches Hermione using her time turner towards the start of the year, and promises to keep quiet in exchange for getting to ride along sometimes. Ron knows there’s something up there, but he can’t figure out what.

-The great thing about not being a fugitive from the law is that when Sirius gets it into his head to give his godson a Firebolt, he can do so openly. Will gets one too, in the interest of fairness, but he isn’t quite as excited as Harry is.

-To the shock of no one who was paying attention, Will and Harry both have equally terrible reactions to the dementors. Lupin offers the two of them lessons, and Amy decides that whatever Will can do she can do better, dragging Ron and Hermione with her, so all five of them end up learning.

-On the subject of Buckbeak, the twins write their parents about the unfairness, and James decides that he can do something about this. Hagrid reports to the ministry that Buckbeak has been put down, and James writes his sons to tell them that he has coincidentally purchased a hippogriff for the family, to the exasperation of Lily. Harry is elated to get a hippogriff. Will is smug to get one over Malfoy.

-Other than that, the school year is mostly quiet, but the shadow of Peter the traitor and Bellatrix Freaking Lestrange is hanging over everything.

-Two very important things happen that spring.

  * Ron, Hermione, and Amy all manage their first patronuses. Hermione and Ron have their otter and dog, as canon. Amy has a komodo dragon. She’s rather put out that it isn’t a real dragon.



  * Over Easter break, the Potter parents have very big news for their sons: They’re expecting their third child, due in June. They waited to tell them in person, and because they were worried about a miscarrage.



-If Will and Harry initially had no idea what to do with one another, they really have no idea what to do with a baby sibling. Harry eventually points out that the two of them will be in school most of the year, so it won’t affect them as much, which calms things down, and they are mostly okay with the idea by the time that they go back to school.

-The other show finally drops during the last week of school, when Bellatrix decides for some forsaken reason to lure the dementors into Hogwarts right in the middle of dinner. It’s absolute chaos, and several students are very nearly Kissed. Make matters worse, Bellatrix also managed to take out most of the teachers before it started.

-The day is saved by our christmas quintet when they cast their patronuses, Will and Harry for the first time. Harry has his canon stag, Will an enormous killer whale. Together, the five of them drive the dementors out.

-Bellatrix escapes, but Wormtail doesn't. He probably would have been Kissed on the spot, but Will convinced everyone that he might still be useful. So he was returned to Azkaban. The wisdom of this remains to be seen.

-Thus ends another exciting year at Hogwarts! All five of them received awards for special services to the school, which very nearly distracts their parents from the fact that they could have died. Nearly. Someone is going to regret being born when Molly Weasely gets ahold of them.

**End Book Three**


	4. Chapter 4

-Daisy Grace Potter is born right on time, healthy and happy, and she has her big brothers wrapped around her little finger from the word go.

-When the quidditch world cup rolls around, Lily elects to stay home with Daisy, who is too young for Quidditch, so James takes the boys to make a father-son event of it. Not that that plan lasts long, once they meet up with the Weaselys plus female portion of the Christmas Quintet. Our bunch is back in business.

-The aftermath of the World Cup is a mess. With the riots, no one knows what’s going on, everyone’s scared, and confusion runs rampant. Will is about ready to spit nails when Harry is accused of putting up the Dark Mark. And angry Slytherin is a dangerous Slytherin. They are all on Will’s hit list.

-Professor Lupin had planned to come back for a second year, but had a very close call with his wolfsbane and decides not to tempt fate further, so impostor Moody is still a go.

-Will’s name comes out of the goblet to the surprise of none of my readers if they were paying attention. He had been having a good time practicing his somewhat neglected french with the Beauxbatons students and was entirely blindsided.

-Let me tell you, if they had a hard time convincing people that Harry didn’t put his name in the goblet in canon, Slytherin BWL Will Potter was a much harder sell. Harry believed him though, as did Hermione. Amy and Ron did not.

-Hagrid tells Will about the dragons, and Harry guilts him into also telling Cedric. They also tell Amy, who puts aside her pique because Dragons!

-It should be noted, Will is not nearly as crazy about flying as Harry. He likes it, he’s good at it, but he just doesn’t quite get what the big deal is. So he does not try the flying thing. He does, however, try the summoning thing. The thing he summoned? A heavy cloak that they hit with every fireproofing, scent-blocking, and please-oh-please-don’t-notice-me spell they could beg, borrow, or steal.

-It almost works, there’s just a bit of a scramble at the end when Mama Dragon notices one of her eggs walking off and he has to run.

-Ron comes around and apologizes, and Will forgives him, but reserves the right to give him crap for it for the rest of forever. Amy also tries to give Ron crap, but Harry calls her on the hypocrisy and she stops, sulking all the while.

-The Yule Ball is a giant mess that the boys would rather forget, but Amy will never let them. Hermione doesn’t know what all the fuss is about. She had a wonderful time.

-During the second task, Harry is taken as Will’s hostage. Will’s hit list is growing exponentially the longer this tournament goes on.

-Harry has been having freaky Voldemort dreams, to the concern of all and sundry. These dreams are even more disturbing than the canon ones because Bellatrix Lestrange is filling the role Peter Pettigrew would once have filled.

-Things are mostly calm from there up to the third task. Not-Moody grabs Harry as soon as Will enters the maze. He’ll be a useful hostage, plus Voldemort decided he wanted both brothers. No point immunizing himself to one if the other can just come up from behind and start with the burning.

-Will about loses his ever loving mind when he comes to in Little Hangleton. Cedric is screaming on the ground while being tortured, his brother is unconscious, and he and his brother are tied to tombstones. Harry might’ve nearly been Slytherin, but Will was nearly Gryffindor, and you do not mess with his family.

-Voldemort tries to pull the duel to the death BS, but Harry is just a smidge less unconscious than previously believed, and he managed to wiggle free while everyone else was preoccupied, snipe Voldie from behind, and then the brothers skedaddle, grabbing Cedric on the way past.

-As I mentioned previously, Bellatrix is filling the role that in canon would have fallen to Wormtail, cutting off her hand and all. So she decided it would be more fun to play with her food. Cedric is alive. Shaky, hurting, damaged, he may never speak without a stutter again, but he’s alive. And boy is he mad.

-It is much harder for the minister to maintain his denial in the face of Cedric “I just spent half an hour being crucioed by Bellatrix Lestrange and witnessed the resurrection ritual of He Who Must Not Be Named firsthand” Diggory, but he somehow manages. No one quite knows how he does it.

-This year, coming home isn’t triumphant, or joyful. But when they’re in their parents' arms, little Daisy is so excited to see them, and everyone they love is  _ safe _ , for that moment, everything is alright.

**End Book Four**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not gonna lie, this was probably the hardest chapter to write, because book four is nearly two or three times as long as book three, but I didn't want to go pull out our copy to do any checking, because I just don't like book four as much as the others. Hope it came out okay anyway!


	5. Chapter 5

-Harry continues to have creepy Voldemort dreams all summer. Between that, the more normal nightmares that he and Will both have regularly, and little Daisy developing a nasty case of irritable bowel syndrome, no one sleeps very much that summer.

-James takes out his sleepless temper on the newspapers that are slandering Harry as a stupid brute and an attention seeking glory hog and Will as a vicious manipulator and a madman. Sadly by the time even James Potter manages to make them knock it off, the damage was done.

-Harry is honestly more annoyed by what they said about Will than himself, and vice versa.

-They considered moving to number 12, but decided that was not a house they wanted little Daisy in possibly ever, so they put the Fidelius on their own house instead, with Lily as the secret keeper this time. Sirius comes to live with them. His old apartment might not have been secure but he’s going to live in his old family home again over his dead body.

-Hermione writes to tell them that she’s going to be staying at Grimmauld Place the rest of the summer, and Harry convinces their parents to let them go see her before she goes, help her pack and such. Lily wants to meet her parents, so she tags along.

-While they’re there, the dementors attack. Umbridge tries to get at least one of them up on underage magic charges, but that doesn’t work nearly as well when Lily Potter walks into the courtroom and says “This trial is a farce, I was the one who cast the patronus, and seeing as there were dementors it was self defense.” She carefully does not mention that it really was in front of a muggle. It was Hermione’s dad, he already knew and therefore doesn’t count.

-Umbridge is still a horrible person and still invading Hogwarts, but her “Cedric Diggory had a tragic accident” spiel is a much harder sell when Cedric Diggory himself is still in school, walking around, and willing to tell anyone who asks that he was tortured by Bellatrix Lestrange on the orders of the reborn He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Incidentally, Cedric has taken Neville Longbottom under his wing this year. The two of them have been overheard muttering some very concerning things to one another.

-The first time someone tries to make Cedric use a blood quill he snaps the thing in half and takes it to Dumbledore. It isn’t enough to oust the toad from the school, sadly, but it does delay her being crowned high inquisitor for nearly a month.

-Between the Slytherin Boy-Who-Lived and Cedric Diggory the DA is much bigger this time around, with both older students and some of Will’s fellow Slytherins.

-As it transpires, Will might be the one they’re basing this whole thing around this time, but he is a sucky, sucky teacher. He offloads most of his teaching to Cedric and Harry by the end of the first week, to the relief of many. 

-Will is also not initially convinced by the name, but the irony won him over. As it often does.

-Another interesting thing Will does is sneak out of the planning session to go ask Madam Pomfrey questions. She is always happy to nurture a budding young healer.

-Freaky snake dream for Harry is sadly still a go, but it does mean that Arthur Weasley lives. That doesn’t stop the incident from concerning all and sundry.

-Amy reread Dracula over the summer, and suggests that maybe what’s happening to Harry is similar to what happened to Mina Harker, that is, Voldemort made a connection between himself and Harry in order to spy through his eyes and ears. Most of them don’t get the reference until Hermione produces a copy. They are exponentially more concerned once they do get the reference. 

-Getting the reference sadly does not do anything to convince Harry that such a thing might not be as useful as he thinks it is. I mean, it worked in the book, didn’t it? (That was FICTION, Harry.)

-Harry’s occlumency lessons do not go appreciably better than canon’s did, but Will managed to smooth talk his way in too, and they mostly help keep each other calm. Mostly. Will quietly asks Hermione to find them some books on the subject so that maybe they can figure it out quicker and be done already.

-Know what else Hermione does? Arranges interviews for the Quibbler for not just Will, but Cedric and Harry as well. All three of them are more than happy to share.

-Umbridge is still a petty, petty woman, but this time, the DA has Slytherins on their side. Even after they get caught, practice continues. They practice in quiet corridors, abandoned classrooms, their own dorms, in the dead of night, under the cover of crowds, anywhere and anytime Umbridge isn’t looking. They pass subtle secret messages and lessons between houses and from the upper years to the lower. It’s quiet, it’s hidden, it’s the start of the revolution.

-For everyone but the Weasley twins. They’re just making Umbridge’s life hard left, right, and center. Their exit from the school was the stuff of legend.

-All five of our christmas quintet pull off corporeal patronuses for their DADA OWL. Umbridge was gnashing her teeth the entire time.

-Harry still has the visions of Sirius that send the quintet to the department of mysteries, and it goes both better and worse than canon. Better because Will, Amy, and Cedric on top of the Gryffindor three, Neville, Ginny, and Luna was a good bit of extra firepower. Worse because Cedric very nearly had a panic attack when he gets cornered by Bellatrix Lestrange, and Neville goes about berserk when he sees that.

-Then the cavalry arrives! And a number of the death eaters very quickly regret their life choices.

-Sirius very nearly goes through the veil, but Amy is standing right there, and she manages somehow to grab him by the ankle and with the help of all the Hogwarts group, pull him back through. 

-Sirius is frostbitten, comatose, and no one knows when or if he’ll wake up, but he’s alive. Will might’ve fallen a little bit in love with Amy right then and there.

-Dumbledore and Voldemort have their grand, climactic battle right in the atrium of the ministry right as everyone is coming into work. The look on the Minister’s face is priceless. 

-James Potter has to be restrained from hexing Minister Fudge. He just very nearly lost his brother and both his sons in one night, he is not having a good time.

-The school year ends, and everyone celebrates the end of The Toad as they go home to their families. But everyone knows that this is only the beginning.

**End Book Five**


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my gosh, I almost forgot, I am so sorry! We're starting to hit the big ones here, things are getting hot.

-The summer following the battle at the department of mysteries is tense. Everyone was terrified, and James and Lily were having to step up more than ever in the order.

-It wasn’t all bad, though. This was the year Lily finally agreed to let James teach the boys the animagus transformation. Harry has been waiting and preparing for this day for years. Will isn’t quite as excited, but he thinks it will be incredibly useful in the coming war, which is perhaps the same thing. Doesn’t stop Harry from being the first one to pull it off. He’s an elk. When Will eventually gets it, he’s an elephant seal, and frustrated by this. Why does Harry get the elegant, dignified transformation and Will gets the floppy-nose blubber monster? Clearly it should be the other way around!

-Will is the one Dumbledore recruits to bring Slughorn in. Will is a good bit craftier and more deliberate than his brother, but the result in the end was the same.

-Harry is still very suspicious of Malfoy. Will thinks he’s being paranoid, and so do Ron and Hermione, but Amy agrees that something’s rotten in the state of Slytherin.

-On the other hand when Harry finds the Half-Blood Prince’s book, Will just wants to know if Harry will let him copy the notes, to the frustration of Hermione.

-Will, the acknowledged BWL, is the one invited to the Slug Club rather than Harry. He doesn’t enjoy it much more than Harry would have, but then, he is a Slytherin, he knows the importance of networking. So he puts up with it.

-Will is also the one asked to private lessons with Dumbledore. He’s totally telling the other four everything, naturally, but he’s smart enough to be careful about it.

-Harry and Amy continue their investigation into Malfoy. The amulet incident sets them back, but they’re not giving up that easily.

-Ron nearly gets hexed a few times when he and Lavender are being particularly obnoxious. He is very lucky that Will doesn't live with him or have his brother’s temper. Will has very little patience for that sort of thing. He’s also got very little patience for Hermione’s tiff. Will is running short of patience in general.

-Will overhears Snape and Malfoy’s conversation, and reluctantly admits that his brother might, just might, be onto something. But he still thinks they’re massively overestimating Malfoy.

-Christmas is tense. There’s a big party that they all attend, and who should crash but Percy Weasely and Minister Scrimgeor himself? Percy is very lucky he didn’t get hexed. Actually, so was the minister. Harry overheard part of his conversation with Will, and, well, Will always has been good at riling people up, and the Potter twins have gotten fairly protective of each other since Little Hangleton.

-Ron’s poisoning led to an absolute manhunt. No one hurts one of the christmas quintet without the other four coming down on them like a ton of bricks.

-Luna’s commentary sends Will and Amy into stitches. Will also very nearly kills Cormac McLaggen.

-While her boys are away at school, Lily decides to give her sister one last chance. She leaves Daisy with James and goes to visit. Petunia refuses to listen to a single word Lily says or to apologize for her treatment of Harry in any way, screaming at Lily and throwing her out of the house. But on her way out, Dudley stops her and gives her a letter for Harry.

-As it turns out, without Harry to beat on when Dudley was thirteen he made some very unwise choices, went too far, and ended up staying a few months in juvenile detention, with mandatory counseling and anger management. He took this for the warning it was, and has been doing his best to turn his life around, and now he wants to apologize. Lily agrees to give Harry his letter.

-Will is a bit more persuasive than Harry, but it still takes him long enough to get the memory out of Slughorn he’s about ready to scream in frustration by the time he manages it.

-Speaking of, the talk of horcruxes has been making Will more and more suspicious as they go along. He still remembers the Dracula conversation. But he also knows what that would mean for his brother, so he refuses to think about it. He is very quickly distracted by the prophecy, anyway.

-Will, not Harry, is the one who goes to the cave with Dumbledore, and the one who is paralyzed under the invisibility cloak when Dumbledore dies. He once again pulls out all the dirty french words he knows to call someone a fool, but this time, it’s himself. If only he had listened to Harry, maybe this wouldn't have happened.

-Thanks to the felix felicis that Harry was still the one to win, Dumbledore was the only death of the invasion of Hogwarts, but there was still far too much damage.

-The year ends with a funeral and a promise. The five of them will not rest until Voldemort is gone for good.

**End Book Six**


	7. Chapter 7

-Since the Potter twins are protected by Fidelius, not blood wards, they do not have to spend their seventeenth birthday nearly dying. Daisy, who just turned three in June, doesn’t understand why everyone is so sad.

-James Potter stepped up as the head of the order after Dumbledore’s death, and he did a good job, but everyone felt the loss of their founder keenly.

-Will spent the summer quietly reading every source on horcruxes that he could get his hands on, but he still hasn’t found a way to destroy one without also destroying its vessel. Not that he’ll  _ need _ one, since his brother  _ is not _ a horcrux, but it’s still better to be prepared. He would kill Dumbledore if he wasn’t already dead.

-The wedding was absolutely beautiful. The attack that followed was less so. Luckily for our christmas quintet, Amy and Hermione have been plotting by owl, and they’re ready to go. The taboo still causes problems, though.

-James was stuck in Britain, but they had to think about Daisy, so Lily left. And mysterious packages that came through less than legal ways full of every useful potion and charm Lily could make arrived regularly.

-The horcrux hunt is much more cramped with five searchers rather than three, but infiltrating the ministry is much smoother.

-Ron still leaves, sadly, and the only reason Amy didn’t follow is because she had broken her ankle and it was taking Will a while to heal it.

-But! Ron comes back, like he always does, and saves all their bacon just in the nick of time.

-When Harry has his bonehead moment and gets them all caught, the snatchers miss Amy. With her help, Dobby's rescue goes better. But they still… they don’t know if he made it. He stayed behind while Amy apparated away with everyone else, and they don’t know if he made it out after.

-Gringotts is a massive mess.

-Getting into Hogsmeade is also something of an adventure. The christmas quintet is more than thrilled to reunite with the Hogwarts-based rebellion. This time around, there are Slytherins in their midst.

-The Battle of Hogwarts goes about like it did in canon for most of it, that is to say, it’s bloody and brutal and a lot of good people lay down their lives. The diadem is destroyed, but at a great cost.

-When Voldemort calls for Will to come out to him, Will is with Amy, and she sits on him until he stops trying to be a self-sacrificing moron. Harry is alone.

-The thing is, the Potter twins aren’t identical the way the Weasley twins are. Their color of their eyes, the shape of their noses, the pitch of their voices. Harry was tanned from playing quidditch, and Will liked to buzz his hair down short. And of course, the lightning bolt scar that in another life would have made Harry famous. They weren’t identical. But in poor lighting, with their hoods up to obscure their faces, they could pass.

-Harry takes a robe with a deep, dark hood, and he goes out to meet Voldemort in his brother’s place.

-We know what happens next. Voldemort destroys his unintentional horcrux, and in his hubris, leaves Harry tied to life. But Harry walked to his own death in his brother’s place. He had every intention of dying so that his brother could live. And in magic, intent is what matters. Death let him go. But his sacrifice was accepted.

-Voldemort leads his triumphant march back up to the castle only to find The Boy Who Lived still living, still defying him, and protected by a new sacrifice Voldemort has no defense against. And oh how Voldemort rages then.

-Neville kills Nagini. Ron hits Voldemort from behind with petrificus totalus. And Will? Will falls on Voldemort with sorrow and fury and the full power of his brother’s sacrifice behind him, and he burns Voldemort to ashes.

-And in the end? They lost a lot, but they also gained. Our heroes stand tall and proud, arm in arm and hand in hand, and they face the dawning of a new day.

**End Book Seven**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for following this so far! Next chapter will cover the epilogue years, and after that I'm hoping to get another chapter of my narnia/atla crossover out finally now that this isn't eating my brain. This has been so much fun and I'm grateful to the (few) people who have been encouraging me. Happy Independence Day, everybody! (Or 4th of July, since you don't have to celebrate a holiday today for me to want you to have a great day!)


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who followed my outline this far! If you don't care for canon pairings I might suggest just pretending this chapter doesn't exist. Since this is fiction, that is allowed. And just a reminder, if anyone wants to turn this into a full fledged fic I will be beyond thrilled. Thanks again everybody!

-And after all that? Well, there are any number of ways it could’ve gone. The one I like to think it was is this:

-Harry and Ginny got married, and so did Hermione and Ron. Harry’s firstborn son was James Sirius, and his only daughter was Lily Luna, but his second son and middle child was Albus William.

-Hermione ran for, and won, Minister of Magic, and passed a variety of legislation offering rights and protections to those who had previously been considered less than human, and she instituted a higher standard of education, just in time for her eldest daughter to enter Hogwarts.

-Will and Amy too eventually got together, but it took them longer. They danced around each other for ages before Amy finally got tired of it and just yanked Will into a kiss in the middle of a big party celebrating the fifth anniversary of Voldemort’s defeat.

-They also had three children. Poppy Harrietta, the same age as her cousin Albus, Remus Rubeus, two years younger, and Violet Dorathea, three years younger than that.

-Will went on to become an accomplished healer, and Amy an acclaimed author. Among her more notable works were a memoir detailing her time at Hogwarts and the Second Voldemort War as a member of the christmas quintet, a bestselling series of horror novels, and exactly one gushy sappy romantic comedy that was published under a pseudonym.

-Daisy turned out to be just as big a troublemaker as her father and brothers, turning Hogwarts upside down within her first six months there. Her family was very proud, except Lily, who has come to accept that all her children are going to give her grey hair and just laughs.

-And further down the line, the same year Albus Potter is sorted Slytherin, his cousin Poppy Potter is sorted Gryffindor, to the great amusement of their families.

-And what happens after that? Well. That’s a whole other story, isn’t it?

**The End**

**Author's Note:**

> For the record, anyone who wants to use this outline to make a full-fledged story can be my guest, I just wanted to get it out into the world without taking the time away from the other projects I'm already working on, including an original webcomic that I hope to start publishing soon!
> 
> Please take note of the "no bashing" tag and refrain from bashing in the comments, please. I don't mind constructive criticism so long as it's actually constructive, but if you just hate the characters then please take that somewhere else!


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